Maya Apocalypse 2012 in the Media -- The Cataclysm that Never Was.
Author(s): Andrea Messer
Year: 2015
Summary
December 21, 2012 was supposed to be the Maya apocalypse, the end of the world as we know it. In reality, it was only the end of one Maya calendar cycle of 5122 years -- the end of the 13th Baktun. Even at that, the Maya saw the ending of calendars as a renewal, not an end. But somehow, somewhere this event was interpreted as a coming cataclysm of immense proportion. In the popular press and online, the Maya apocalypse was imminent. How was the coming of this supposed event covered by the press both in the U.S. and elsewhere. Who got it right and who piled misconception upon misconception. What can an event like this tell us about archaeological coverage and how it can go very, very wrong.
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Cite this Record
Maya Apocalypse 2012 in the Media -- The Cataclysm that Never Was.. Andrea Messer. Presented at The 80th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, San Francisco, California. 2015 ( tDAR id: 396061)
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Keywords
Geographic Keywords
Mesoamerica
Spatial Coverage
min long: -107.271; min lat: 12.383 ; max long: -86.353; max lat: 23.08 ;